The Lands Where Cheese is Born: Geographically Indicated Cheeses in Türkiye and Their International Analogues

Türkiye has a highly diverse cheese repertoire, yet its geographically indicated (GI) cheeses remain underrepresented in the international dairy literature. This review synthesizes the 44 GI-registered Turkish cheeses recognized as of 2025 using official GI dossiers, institutional sources, and peer-reviewed literature from Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and DergiPark. Turkish cheeses are grouped into major technological families and compared with selected international analogues according to production technology, milk source, ripening environment, sensory profile, and historical continuity. The findings indicate that Turkish GI cheeses are more effectively interpreted as a technologically diverse repertoire comprising brined, pasta-filata, skin-, earthenware-, and wood-ripened, heat-treated, and mold- or spice-defined cheeses. Some show close affinity to established international families, whereas others remain regionally distinctive. Cow milk is reported or permitted, either alone or alongside other milks, in 88.6% of the cheeses; Marmara and Eastern Anatolia each account for 25.0%, while Balıkesir (n = 5) and Hatay (n = 4) lead at the provincial level. Overall, GI registration emerges not only as a legal marker of origin, but also as a means of codifying artisanal knowledge, maturation environments, and sensory identity.